


signed with a lie

by mcmeekin



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Zeo
Genre: (and it's way more about kim's development than any sort of romance), (i don't ship the canon relationships this fic mentions if that helps), Gen, oh look another kimberly fic who's surprised not me, this fic mentions canon relationships if that bothers you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:10:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmeekin/pseuds/mcmeekin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She puts a letter in the mail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	signed with a lie

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all, and welcome to Team 'Pissed Off About People Using the Dear John Letter to Justify Their Kimberly Ann Hart Hatred'! Hope you're all enjoying your evening; now if you look to your left you'll see where we're joining up with Team 'The Letter Was Totally in Character So Stop Using It to Make Up BS Reasons to Hate Katherine' and to your right you might catch a glimpse of Team 'Laughing Really Hard at the Thought That Kimberly and Katherine are Anything Other Than Ultimate BFFs'.  
> All mistakes are my own.

_She puts a letter in the mail._

It is easier to leave than she thought it would be. Pack, say goodbye, get on a plane, and boom, Florida. And it’s easier to not think about everything that's happened than she thought it would be. There’s so much training and drilling and friends to make and things to do that she hardly has a breath in between to think about home. But she manages to get a letter back every once in a while and make the occasional call. Sometimes she’ll catch a glimpse of a ranger fight on someone else’s TV. But mostly there's no time. She doesn’t think she could stop and think about what she's done if she wanted to.

_She puts a letter in the mail._

Then she starts having nightmares. She faints once or twice during practice. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with her, that it must be the shock of moving places and the more rigorous exercise that's been added to her routine. She doesn’t mention that training is actually less of a workout than fighting and that being kidnapped is probably more shocking than moving states. She doesn’t mention the rangers to anyone, not if she can help it. People ask, but she gives short answers and steers the conversation away. She starts actively trying not to think about pink spandex and succeeds only half the time.

_She puts a letter in the mail._

She gets a letter from Jason, Zack, and Trini with a picture in it of their last day at the conference. Jason and Zack stand on either side of Trini, their arms around her and each of them planting a kiss on her cheeks as she cracks up. The letter talks about future plans and expresses their joy at hearing that she’s going to the Pan Globals. She puts the picture in the drawer next to her bed and doesn’t sleep that night because she thinks that the last time she laughed like that was when they were all still in Angel Grove.

_She puts a letter in the mail._

Everyone’s talking about the power ranger’s suit change, but all she can think about is the time change. She has headaches and dizzy spells because it feels like someone has crammed two sets of memories into her head. In one version, she never grew up in Angel Grove at all. She has moments where she can’t remember which set is real, moments where she sits down on the ground, hugs her knees, and rocks back and forth with her eyes screwed shut. Moments when she can’t remember Adam’s name or Zack’s smile. Moments where Aisha doesn’t feel real and power rangers feel distant.

She hates that sometimes she likes that set of memories better.

But mostly she hates that she seems like the only one affected this way, the only one to notice the slip in time. She asks Billy about the suit change innocently in a letter and mentions that she felt the time change in passing. He responds promptly, telling her the whole story and even including a picture of Tanya. He says she must have felt the change because of her residual connection to the grid. “After all,” the letter ends, “once a ranger, always a ranger.”

She’s never wanted to burn a letter more.

_She puts a letter in the mail._

Billy’s letter makes her realize that leaving was easy because she never really left. She realizes that Billy was right all those years ago when she sat next to his bed and asked him if he’d ever stop being a ranger, and he’d responded that he couldn’t live in Angel Grove and not be entangled somehow. She knows he was right because she never really left Angel Grove. She’s still entangled, once and always, because she’s never moved on. She realizes that she likes her fake memories better because they contain nothing for her to move on from.

It’s then that she starts forcing herself the watch the rangers fight on TV when the rest of her friends do. She watches Katherine, watches Rocky, watches Adam, watches Tanya, watches Tommy and pretends she doesn't know any of them. She starts feeling more detached, listening to her friends talk about the rangers like distant entities, but it’s not enough. She stops writing to them about rangering. She calls Trini, and they don’t even mention spandex once. Slowly, slowly, she stops thinking about it so much. She keeps worrying though. The nightmares come and go. And she knows what she has to do before she can fully move on, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

She puts a letter in the mail, sealed with a kiss and signed with a lie. She goes on dates again. She stops worrying. She stops dreaming. She laughs and wins competitions and catches dinner with Zack when he’s in town, and she feels freer than she’s ever felt before. One day she passes by a TV whose announcer is talking about the Gold Ranger that’s been floating around Angel Grove for a couple of weeks. She stops to watch footage of his fights roll and starts laughing in the middle of the store. She writes Jason a letter full of teasing and thinks that a couple months ago, she would have gotten this news and thrown up.

When Jason shows up on her doorstep and begs her to come back as a surprise, she laughs and agrees because it’s not a big deal anymore. And she can joke about wanting to morph in a tight spot with him because he knows she doesn’t mean it.

So when it’s all over, she can look over at Tommy and that tiny new Blue Ranger on his shoulders and think about moving on, think about how she can be involved without being entangled, think about the letter she sent. He makes eye contact with her and smiles, and she thinks that, maybe, he understands.

Years later, she gets a letter in the mail. A letter she knew was coming because her pink bridesmaid dress is already hanging in the closet.


End file.
